The Gazette Luvs Wal-Mart
Boy, the Gazette really luvs Wal-Mart - elitists they are not, and anyone who dares criticize the giant retailer now trying to invade Woodland Park are "parasites that live off the host called capitalism." These parasites include environmentalists, labor unions, and academics. I guess people who want to preserve the environment, people who fight for living wages and health care for workers, and the people who study our society and teach our children have a hidden agenda to "collectivize" our economy. Helpful Hint from the G: they're commies!
Here are the wonderful benefits to society that Wal-Mart gives in which the G can find no fault:
- unfettered free trade (translation: $147 billion trade debt with China)
- union free work place (translation: low wages and workers forced onto Medicare)
- 100,000 square foot box architecture reduces "sprawl". (At least they have a sense of humor - one of those will look great in Woodland Park!)
posted by Zappatero @ 9:15 AM
5 comments
5 Comments:
It's Medicaid, the government health program for people with no money, rather than Medicare, the government health program for old people with no money. Both have been cut by Bush, but Medicaid is the one for which Wal-Mart employees qualify in large numbers. Sam's Club is also owned and run by Wal-Mart, in case you don't know.
Wal-Mart and Sam's Clubs lock night workers in with no key (they changed that in Jan 2004 here in the Springs because of a NYT investigation) and Wal-Mart
makes them work extra hours for no pay.
Wal-Mart managers falsify their workers' timecards so that they are not paid for hours they work, and they are so fearful of losing their jobs that they rarely make a formal complaint. They have no union to save them from these predatory practices.
Wal-Mart made the top spot for total revenue in the Fortune 500 list for the 4th year in a row, announced today. Richard Band, editor of Profitable Investing, refers to Wal-Mart as a "prodigious profit machine." Band continues, "Even more remarkable: Despite opening 2,600 stores over the past decade, with the resulting threat of cannibalization and saturation, WMT earned a slightly wider profit margin in 2004 than in 1994."
Isn't that impressive. Glad they are making such a profit by outsourcing their employee health and food subsidies to the taxpayers!
Wal-Mart is the biggest corporate welfare queen in the country. The link I just provided was to Florida, but California's taxpayers are also screwed (as are all states), spending $86 million a year providing healthcare and other public assistance to the state's 44,000 Wal-Mart employees, according to a new study by UC Berkeley's Institute for Industrial Relations.
The study, "Hidden Cost of Wal-Mart Jobs," found that the average Wal-Mart worker required $730 in taxpayer-funded healthcare and $1,222 in other forms of assistance, such as food stamps and subsidized housing, to get by.
Nationally,
a Democratic staff study, prepared for a congressional committee, which concluded that the federal government subsidizes $2,100 in health care and other costs for each Wal-Mart employee annually.
Of COURSE the Gazette loves them, the Gazette is a knee-jerk propaganda machine. Sad that the only real coverage of the City Council's actions, for example, has to come from the 'radical' weekly, The Independent. We don't bother subscribing to the Gazette since they forced Tosches to find a place where he could actually write.
Individually, just the top four Wal-Mart executives (alone!) donated $124,000 to George and the GOP for election 2004, and Wal-Mart's political action committee, the biggest company PAC, gave Republicans $1,053,000 in donations in the past two years, which is 81% of their donations, a higher proportion than any of the top 25 corporate PACs, according to PoliticalMoneyLine, a nonpartisan, Washington-based group that tracks campaign-finance disclosures.
Costco pays more for a starting, bottom-of-the-ladder worker than Wal-Mart pays as an AVERAGE hourly wage. Costco offers comprehensive health insurance to most of its 78,000 U.S. employees. Wal-Mart to less than half of its 1.3 million US workers. Costco has a significant number of workers who are unionized. Wal-Mart won't allow that; they'd rather close a store than allow a union (see Canada). Costco is coming to Colorado Springs. They may wind up in the University Village complex being planned by Kratt&Co., or they may locate elsewhere in town, but they are coming. Projected date is 2006, and until them, I am driving to Littleton or Aurora to shop Costco there. No kidding.
Sorry about the typos, people, this blogger comment window is so narrow that it's hard to see what I'm writing once I add in the links. So, feel free to mentally remove the "which" from the "Nationally..." cost of Wal-Mart paragraph, and change "until them" to "until then," and a few other things... we really need an Edit Post capability in this setup, even for responses :-)
that's ok democra-she. you have lot's of good thoughts there!
I read that Wal-Mart was fined $11 million for hiring illegal aliens to clean their floors and toilets. $11 million? That's about 20 minutes worth of sales for them. I'm sure that really shook them up.
As for the Gazette - gee, what a surprise.....
Newsflash to Woodland Parkers...what made your town unique was that you did not have a Walmart. You will regret the decision to have Walmart there.
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